The most important event for the Group was the completion of a hugh paper comparing the nature of job shifts in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States around 1990 as a consequence of their differing labour market institutions. This paper could not have been written without Paul de Graaf, Ruud Luijkx, Thomas DiPrete and Michael Tahlin being present together at NIAS. Persons worked on the data of other persons for other countries than their own country.

The second happy event was the conference sponsored by the Dutch National Science Foundation on Eastern Europe. Harry Ganzeboom, Ruud Luijkx, Donald Treiman and Robert Erikson presented results in their survey comparing aspects of social stratification in several countries of Eastern European countries before and after 1989.

Walter Müller completed a book at NIAS -edited with Yossi Shavit- on the association between education and early jobs in various industrial countries around 1990. He used the chapters originating from such scholars for the Netherlands as Paul de Graaf and Wout Ultee and for Sweden such as Robert Erikson, to test a theory that institutions make for particular differences in this association. These chapters, plus the final chapter by Walter Müller and Yossi Shavit, were extensively discussed at NIAS, with the authors being sent back to their computers for more appropriate statistics and tables.